


Between You, Me And The Gate-Post

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Smart People [5]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3291446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Becker starts to settle in at CMU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between You, Me And The Gate-Post

            Temporarily bereft of speech, Hilary Becker stared at the couple enthusiastically making out in the stacks of _his_ library. He thought he recognised one of them as the gorgeous student who had been inexplicably eyeing up Temple, that conspiracy-theory headcase reading Evolutionary Zoology, but the other was completely beyond recognition. Well, not completely – he looked like one of the trainee military nurses, even if Hilary couldn’t be sure of the name.

 

            Hilary was going to have a Stern Word with the former Lieutenant Owen, see if he didn’t.

 

            He broke his paralysis. “Oi! You two!”

 

            The couple ignored him. The student climbed into the trainee nurse’s lap, and moaning noises were heard. Hilary seriously considered fetching a hose or bucket of water, but recalled that the library’s collection of back copies of the National Geographic was important to some people, and settled for grabbing the most recent issue and swatting the student on the back with it, as the only bit of either of them he could decently reach.

 

            The student yelped, and the trainee nurse glared. Hilary stood his ground, and pointed in the general direction of the exit with the magazine. “ _Out_ ,” he said firmly.

 

            “Oh, come _on_ , mate. We’re not bothering anyone.” The trainee nurse ran a soothing hand down the student’s back, which ending up settling on her backside. The student giggled. Hilary felt a muscle under his eye twitch.

 

            “You’re bothering _me_ ,” he snapped. “The library is not the place for –“

 

            “Oh, _please_ ,” the student said with elegant disdain. “What have you got to do with it? You can’t want to get at the archives of the National Geographic _that_ badly. What are you looking for?” She looked him up and down. “History, is it? You look like the type. It’s three stacks up and on the-“

 

            Hilary lost his temper. “ _I’m the fucking librarian_! Now get _out_ of my fucking _library_!”

 

            There was a brief silence. Hilary compressed his lips together and breathed through his nose, knowing he had gone red in the face, and not just from anger. Central Metropolitan had a relatively high proportion of slightly older students, and Hilary, although twenty-six, looked twenty-one, with the depressing result that he kept being mistaken for a student. He had been carded twice in the past week alone.

 

            “Fiver,” said a rather severe voice behind him. “Miss Steel. You ought to bloody well know better, both of you.”

 

            Hilary turned around, and noted the presence of the former Lieutenant Owen with extreme relief. “Thank fuck,” he said, feeling that if he’d just destroyed his reputation as a quiet, well-spoken, competent librarian, he might as well go all the way. “This one of your lot?”

 

            “Fiver is,” said Owen, glaring with purpose. “Out, Fiver, I’ll deal with you later. Miss Steel, you want to do your shirt up.”

 

            Fiver disentangled himself from Miss Steel, with a muttered apology to her, and left. Miss Steel got up, straightened her clothing, and brushed past both Hilary and Owen without so much as a word of conciliation, let alone a hint of embarrassment. Hilary re-shelved the copy of the National Geographic instead of swearing at her again.

 

            “Bloody woman,” Owen said, regardless of Hilary’s attempts to get himself back under control. “Now I know why Dr Wickes hates her guts. Sorry about that, Becker.”

 

            “No, it’s fine,” Hilary said, and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “It’s not the first time I’ve caught students canoodling between the shelves. Or the first time I’ve been mistaken for a student myself.”

 

            Owen snorted. “Is this a bad moment for a break?”

 

            Hilary thought. “I need to take delivery of that bunch of replacement textbooks you ordered – they said any time between eight and twelve and it’s half-eleven now. It’s my lunch-break after that, so...” His brain caught up with him at last. “Why?”

 

            Owen grinned. “I was thinking of getting a pint with you, if you were interested. To apologise for Fiver being such a colossal arse, obviously.”

 

            Hilary blinked in shock. “Um...”

 

            The other man’s face fell slightly and he stepped away. “Only if you were interested.”      

 

            “I am,” Hilary said hastily, “just surprised. I moved here recently and I don’t – know a lot of people.” He tried a smile. “I’m not used to strange men asking me out for a coffee.”

           

            Owen grinned at him as they started to walk back up through the library. “First time for everything, yeah? Like finding students making out in the stacks.”

 

            “Oh God, I wish it was the first time,” Hilary said feelingly, and Owen waggled his eyebrows in a way that suggested he’d mentally turned that into a dirty joke. Hilary pulled a face at him. “See you in half an hour, then – or a bit more?”

 

            “Half an hour’s good.” Owen shrugged. “I have a couple of things to sort out which probably won’t even take that long.”

 

            “Okay, then.” Hilary smiled at him again, feeling out of practice. He vanished into his office and carefully didn’t watch Owen disappearing out of the library.

 

            A familiar glimpse of red hair appeared just outside the library’s glass doors, and without thinking Hilary ducked under the desk and pretended to be searching for a pen. If he got caught up helping Jess with her research now, he’d never escape in half an hour.

 

***

           

            Owen’s idea of coffee ended up being a brisk walk to a pub a good fifteen minutes off campus, far away enough that the students didn’t bother with it, and with a nice beer garden. They took their drinks out into said beer garden, and colonised a wooden picnic table of some kind.

 

            “You said you moved here recently,” Owen began, abruptly, but with such a friendly smile that Hilary nearly didn’t realise that he was being interrogated. “With the job?”

 

             Hilary nodded. “I wanted a change of scene.” He shrugged, and took a large gulp of beer. “I found it halfway across the country.”

 

            “Long way to go,” Owen observed.

 

            “Not far enough to get away from my family,” Hilary said emphatically.

 

            Owen laughed. “And have you got away from your family?”

 

            Hilary grinned reluctantly. “So far. You? What brings you here?”

 

            “Left the army, wanted a change of scene,” Owen repeated back, with a friendly smile; Hilary’s grin broadened in recognition of the joke. “I’ve been here nearly four years now. It’s not half bad. The people are nice, anyway.”

 

            “Mmm,” Hilary said neutrally, remembering his encounter in the library. Fiver, or whatever Owen had called him, was probably just horny and susceptible, but Miss Steel had struck him as distinctly unpleasant.

 

             “Not,” Owen said, eyeing his pint, “that you would know, seeing as you don’t talk to any of them.”

 

            Hilary winced. “I was put off by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor.”

 

            “Even _he’s_ not that bad,” Owen said gently. “Even most of the students aren’t that bad, for students. Most of us are a lot nicer than that.” He almost drained his pint. “Dr Wickes and Miss Page are on the verge of ordering you to dinner.”

 

            Hilary frowned and ran a hand through his hair. “That’s... Dr. Wickes, she’s the tallish woman, about my age, black, teaches Economics?...”

 

            “That’s her. Miss Page is her girlfriend.” Owen actually finished his pint. “Surprised you had to ask; everyone knows Dr Wickes. But then, I don’t think you even know my actual name, do you? And I definitely don’t know yours.”

 

            “There’s a bloody good reason no-one knows mine,” Hilary said defensively. “And I do know yours. Isn’t Owen-“

 

            Owen burst out laughing. “No! My first name, not my _sur_ name!”

           

            “...Ah.” Hilary was sure he looked as sheepish as he felt.

 

            Owen snorted. “It’s David. What’s yours?”

 

            Hilary bit his tongue.

 

            “If it helps,” Owen – no, David – said kindly, “in the army they called me Ditzy.”

 

            Hilary shouted with laughter. “That’s definitely worse than Hilary,” he grinned, and then his face fell as he realised he’d just blurted it out, but David (Ditzy? No, Hilary didn’t have the right to be that cruel) wasn’t laughing.

 

            “Bit old-fashioned,” he said, with a friendly smile that reached very warm brown eyes, “but nothing wrong with it. What do most people call you?”

 

            Hilary shrugged, and finished his pint as well. “Just Beck. I had a boyfriend once who called me by my middle name – Alexander – but it... didn’t stick.”

 

            David raised an eyebrow, exuding wryly questioning sympathy. Hilary wondered at the way that the same actions could look so different on a different person, since that was exactly how James Lester had frozen him out on his first day on the job.

 

“Were you escaping the boyfriend as well as your family when you moved?”

 

            Hilary half-shook his head, half-nodded. It was true enough, although just his father’s complaints about his chosen career had been enough to drive him out of the county; Greg’s rejection had been the icing on the cake.

 

            “Tough luck,” David said, kindly but without pity.

 

            Hilary tilted his head from one side to the other, tapping his fingers idly on the weathered wood of the picnic table. A wasp landed on the edge of his empty glass.

 

            “I’ll call you Beck, then,” David decided.

 

            Hilary glanced up, and offered him a quick smile. “Thanks.” He cleared his throat, and shifted decisively. “So. Tell me about all these nice people I don’t know. And – actually, who was that student in the library, I didn’t recognise her, you called her Miss Steel?-“

 

            “Her? Doing her PhD in... something about developing industrial economies. Started only a couple of months ago.” David ran a hand through his hair. “She’s...”

 

            “Not very nice?” Hilary offered.

 

            David grimaced and let his hand drop. “Something like that. I’ve never seen her put a foot wrong exactly. Nothing that you could point to and say was unambiguously wrong and a breach of CMU’s code of conduct or whatever they’re calling the bloody thing now, nothing you could haul her up in front of Lester for. She just likes to... insinuate, you know? She acts like she knows everything about everyone present, like she’s superior. She likes to have people bowing down to her, in order to feed that.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s also fucking gorgeous and unbelievably charming, which means she has half my trainees on a string, but I can’t see the appeal.”

 

            “Why?” Becker blurted. “I mean – I know why _I_ didn’t give a shit about the state of her cleavage, or whatever. But has she done something so – what’s the worst thing she’s done?”

 

            David pursed his lips, seemingly ignoring the other question. “I’ve seen her try to undermine her supervisor. That was enough for me.” Becker’s face apparently spoke for itself, because David explained: “Her supervisor is Dr Wickes, Beck. Dr Wickes is in a relationship with Sarah Page, remember? Miss Page is a PhD candidate in another completely different department. It’s not against any rules, it’s all fair and above-board, they’re so careful to keep their working lives as far apart as possible, but...”

 

            “It’s enough for whatsername, Caroline, to hint?”

 

            David nodded. “It makes Dr Wickes seriously upset, and that means Miss Page is plotting revenge which – well, that’s just not going to go well, is it - but Dr Wickes doesn’t feel like she can do anything about it because it’s so nebulous.” He wrinkled his nose. “Nasty woman. Caroline Steel, I mean.”

 

            “I’d got that far,” Becker mumbled, fiddling with his glass.

 

            “Mm.” The conversation languished, and David and Becker both stared off into the middle distance, but in different directions.

 

            “Ought to be getting back,” Becker said after a bit, rubbing his hands on the knees of his trousers.

 

            “Yeah,” David said, got up, and stretched. He glanced back down at Becker, who sincerely hoped that David hadn’t noticed Becker’s eyes wandering up and down his body, outlined by the bright sunlight. “By the way, I’m having a barbecue Saturday evening. Some of the faculty are coming, and a couple of mates of mine. You’re welcome to come if you’d like to; I can guarantee a Caroline Steel-free zone.” He grinned, easy and warm.

 

            “Yeah,” Becker said, and got to his feet. He smiled tentatively back. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

 

            “Oh, and, Beck?” David’s grin widened. “It was nice, coming out here for a drink. Nice break in the day. Maybe we should make it a regular thing, yeah?”

 

            “...Yeah,” Becker said, smiling a bit less tentatively. “That would be...” He tucked his hands into his pockets, cleared his throat and nodded awkwardly. “That’d be good.”

 

            “It’s a date,” David said, turning away from Becker to head out through the pub, and Becker lost all his breath and felt himself flush, staring at David’s retreating back. He was sure David had used those words on purpose, and he liked what they implied – he liked it very much.

 

            Becker scraped his teeth over his lower lip and grinned helplessly, following David. Funny how things turned out. This morning, the move to CMU had looked like jumping from the fire into the frying pan – not so bad as staying in Kent with all his old friends taking Greg’s side and his dad getting at him all the time, but pretty horrible. Right now, it looked like the best decision he’d ever made, and he was going to milk it for all it was worth.


End file.
